Referencing this spot for its imitation of Tarsem's Levi spot in '92 as opposed to Burt Lancaster's starring role in Frank Perry's film from '68 would be amusing if it weren't so pathetic.

While both Beckham's H&M briefs and the Levi spot do little more than exploit the male bodies of their stars, the Lancaster performance is actually a brilliant critique of then contemporary American culture, or lack thereof, much like 'Don's Party' here in '71.

Ad wankers, wanking, and the irony is that the worship of Becks is more likely to come from other men than from women.

I would have thought comparing an ad with a very similar ad, on an ad blog, was reasonably relevant. Hardly deserving of some condescending prat labeling it as ‘pathetic’. Especially considering that the very moment after you stopped sneering at others, you go on to agree that the ads are more similar to each other than they are to the ‘Swimmer.

I really had no idea anything could be more pretentious than ad wankers until I read your attempt at film criticism.

With a talent for language and writing as extinct as your species' nom de plume, you might have stopped with "I really had no idea".

The critique was aimed at the shortsightedness of comparing new work to derivative work, as opposed to referencing the original, but that simple concept seems to have eluded your mental capacities, stretched as it was.

As far as film criticism, there wasn't any, so hard to imagine from what asshole, or whose other than your own you pulled that observation, although for the simpleminded such as yourself, a comparison between two films made three years apart on continents divided by an ocean and 8000 miles may pass as criticism. Nothing would surprise me.

Again, pathetic little wanker, and by all means wank away, perhaps even imagining David as you toil.

When you open a post with a personal insults, in a thread that has until then been talking about an ad, some bite back is to be expected. Dishing it out often entails some taking it.

“Referencing ... would be amusing if it weren't so pathetic. ... Ad wankers, wanking ..."

And what marked two posters as pathetic and as wankers? Not mentioning ‘The Swimmer’ when they mentioned Levi’s famous Swimmer ad!

I suppose it's possible they may not have known, or it’s at least as likely that they did know and assumed most blog readers did too so there was no point in mentioning it. I don’t know, but are either of those really ‘pathetic’? Basically, they are pathetic for not writing what you would have!

But is there anything more ad wankery than getting upset and abusive over a post on CB?

The 'pathetic' nature of the post, and the 'ad wankers' moniker for those who made it is quite simple really, but for those who continue to be challenged by the criticism, we'll illuminate.

Imagine an ad appropriating the spirit, the story of the track "For What It's Worth" and referencing Public Enemy in the PR as the genesis of the idea, but failing to note that it was originally written by Stephen Stills and recorded by the Buffalo Springfield, and that it tells the story of police brutality in the face of social protest over the Vietnam War, not street gang on gang violence over money and drugs.

When the ad world becomes, as it too frequently does, so enamoured with its own 'creativity', crawling up its own arse, that it rolls out second generation remakes of visual storytelling ideas, ideas that were at one time originally found in art or cinema or literature or music but were appropriated some time ago by a creative director who translated them into an ad, and then references only the previous ad work in the PR, as if the banality of the Levi's spot is the creativity worth emulating for Ritchie and Becks, and not the original work of art, there is a problem.

Pointing out to the uneducated, and otherwise unaware that, no, Paul McCartney, yes that guy playing with what's left of Nirvana, didn't have his greatest achievements with his band Wings, nor doing soundtracks for Bond movies is a dirty job, but a necessary one sadly, and someone who actually knows the score has to do it, especially in the ad world, where there's allot to account for.